School Board & Half-Cent Tax

Last updated on Sep 1, 2024

*Definitive Proof of James Morrison being a PUBLIC FIGURE:

Summary of what happened taken from the MINETA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE's report on 'Revisiting Factors Associated with the Success of Ballot Initiatives with a Substantial Rail Transit Component' written in 2011:

Political Environment:

The City of Charlotte is governed by a council-manager system, but as the only citywide elected executive official, the mayor wields significant political leadership. In November 2007, Republican Mayor Pat McCrory, the popular light rail proponent that was instrumental to passage of the 1998 tax increase, was reelected to a record seventh term. General election challenges in the interim were based in anti-rail issue campaigns, and his challenger in the September 2007 Republican primary likewise tried to make rail the centerpiece of the mayoral election debate. As the Democratic challenger that November was also prorail, the mayor did not champion the issue to the same extent as he had previously, while remaining a supporter of public transit. Mecklenburg County is governed by a nine-member County Commission. Republicans on the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners were among the strongest proponents of repealing the transit tax. Their October 2006 attempt to consider a repeal referendum was stifled by the Democratic majority of the board, who felt this move was premature and an over-reaction to the latest bout of cost overruns

Charlotte had not experienced a tax campaign since the last, successful one in 1998 and was therefore lacking this kind of experience. More specific to the special status of this case, citizen-led referenda in Mecklenburg County or elsewhere in North Carolina in the years leading up to the repeal vote were unprecedented. Citizen led efforts are uncommon in North Carolina, which had its first proposal allowing for initiatives amending the state constitution on the November 2010 ballot.

Recent initiative experience:

The Campaign:

Jay Morrison, a wealthy software engineer and Republican activist, applied his background in Florida politics (where citizen-led initiatives are much more common) to Charlotte. He almost single-handedly brought about the “Stop the Train” petition drive. In March of 2007, he paid for political consulting firm National Voter Outreach to collect the verifiable signatures of 48,669 county voters. At the end of March, when the drive was near completion, Morrison
told supporters he did not want credit for the measure, and was quoted, “I’m done with this. You can’t make me talk about it.” By this time he was contemplating a run for school board, and would only offer the following statement:

We have misplaced priorities in Mecklenburg. We need to redirect our limited resources to building schools. Light rail is wasting billions of dollars at a time when Dr. Peter Gorman says he needs $2.5 billion for schools. I would say that our resources need to be redirected away from light rail and instead we should spend those dollars on new school construction.

Unorganized, poorly funded opposition:

Over the course of the summer of 2007, the loosely organized group Sensible Charlotte Area Transportation (SCAT) held a small number of community talks, some of them led by UNC Charlotte Transportation Engineering Professor David Hartgen. Hartgen was a member of the “Committee of 100” contributing to the development of the 2025 plan, and had then advocated for a sunset or trigger mechanism of the tax to measure its effectiveness. By 2007, he was of the belief that the MTC and CATS were allocating too much money for light rail and were not implementing alternatives that could have been more effective in alleviating traffic congestion. His critiques were funded and distributed by the conservative John Locke Foundation, which also financed a pro-repeal speech by light rail critic Randal O’Toole and produced a series of online articles condemning the system.

Other leaders of the repeal movement were former Charlotte Councilmember Don Reid and Mecklenburg County Commissioner Jim Puckett. The former was a frequent critic of public spending and the latter had received an $11,000 campaign contribution from Morrison. The majority of their influence came in the form of comments published in the region’s major newspaper, The Charlotte Observer. Additionally, State Senator Robert Pittenger, R-Mecklenburg, produced a TV spot questioning spending money on light rail before completing “crucial road projects.”

In July 2007, Morrison requested access to all of Mayor McCrory’s and the City Council’s emails on the subject of the transit tax. Charlotte Observer articles from the time indicate that the request irked the mayor. Within a week, the Observer revealed that Jay Morrison had come into his wealth as a serial litigator, and was involved in a shady credit scheme. The accusations led Morrison to drop his bid for school board and eventually to leave Charlotte.

Of note, an early Observer analysis of submitted signatures found them to be
disproportionately from Democrats, women and African Americans. It was somewhat
puzzling why these typically socioeconomically disadvantaged groups (who theoretically would stand to gain most from a public transit system) would be for a repeal process led by wealthy, white Republican men. It was later reported that many of the signature collectors went about asking voters to “sign this petition to lower the sales tax” and provided no explanation as to the specific ramifications of that action.

Pro-repeal forces were weakly connected and leaderless after Jay Morrison walked away from the effort he began. Without a champion, the pro-repeal message quickly dwindled in public discourse on the issue. The campaign from anti-rail activists lost momentum over the course of summer 2007, and secured only $12,000 in almost entirely individual contributions. Apart from a series of blogs and articles featured on The John Locke Foundation website, SCAT did not appear to have maintained a unified or officially coordinated presence.

In sum, this unique election, from the standpoint of transit tax measures, featured an opposition that was strong enough to qualify a repeal measure for the ballot and yet virtually dissolved by the time of the actual campaign for the repeal referendum.

Website 'StopTheTrain.com' was setup by Morrison in 2006.

The About section says he was already a Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools Bond Oversight Committee member at this time.